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Education Overview

The Gallery offers a wide variety of programs and teaching resources designed to help Yale and community audiences engage with the museum’s diverse collection and special exhibitions. Visitors of all ages will find opportunities to learn about, enjoy, and be inspired by art and artists of the past and present.

Education News

The Gallery draws upon a wide range of teaching staff for its educational programs. In addition to the professional educators and curators on staff, and the scholars and artists invited for special lectures and other events, Yale University undergraduate and graduate students from a wide range of departments are specially trained to lead tours for children and adults. Graduate student Wurtele Gallery Teachers lead groups from elementary through high school on interactive tours that build skills and knowledge through close looking and discussion about works of art. Undergraduate Gallery Guides offer personalized, thematic Angles on Art tours for adult visitors throughout the academic year. Both undergraduate and graduate students provide highlights tours of our collection and exhibitions.

Meet the Educators

Pamela Franks

Pamela Franks is Deputy Director for Exhibitions, Programming, and Education and the Seymour H. Knox, Jr., Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. Franks has directed student curators at the Gallery in the creation of several major exhibitions, most recently Odd Volumes: Book Art from the Allan Chasanoff Collection (2014), and she is actively engaged in developing the Gallery’s visiting-artist programs. She is the project director for the Gallery’s College and University Art Museum Collection-Sharing Initiative funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Franks holds a PH.D. in the History of Art from the University of Texas at Austin with a specialization in modern and contemporary art and is a 2008 graduate of the Getty Leadership Institute.

Jessica Sack

Jessica Sack, the Jan and Frederick Mayer Senior Associate Curator of Public Education, leads the development of the Gallery’s family programs and teaching resources for K–12 teachers and students. Prior to coming to Yale, she was the senior museum educator and coordinator of teacher services at the Brooklyn Museum. She is the author of teacher resource publications such as Picturing a Nation: Teaching with American Art and Material Culture. Jessica received an M.PHIL. in Ethnology and Museum Ethnography from Oxford University and an M.A. in Performance Studies from New York University.

Elizabeth Manekin

In her role as the Assistant Curator of Education, Elizabeth Manekin directs the Gallery’s educational offerings for adult audiences and Yale students. Among the projects and initiatives she oversees are the museum’s signature Gallery Guide Program, the Gallery+ collaboration series, and Art, Lux, et Veritas, an annual publication of student essays produced in collaboration with the Department of the History of Art and the Yale Center for British Art. Elizabeth has served as a guest critic at Yale’s Schools of Art and Architecture and lectures at the Yale School of Drama. She previously worked in the education departments of the Harvard Art Museums and the Addison Gallery of American Art. Elizabeth holds an M.A. in Public Humanities from Brown University.